copying just the catalog to my laptop

[Rockdoc]

Ok, this is what I would like to do:
Copy the photoshop elements catalog from my desktop to my laptop so that I can tag pictures during a long plane ride.

The picture files, however will remain in their current location on the external drive attached to my desktop. Does this mean, as I think that it does, that I essentially won't be able to do this because the thumbnails for the pictures won't show up on my laptop?

Has anybody ever tried this? Or have some insight for me? I don't have time to play around with this before I leave, so I was hoping to pick the collective brains available here.

Thanks,
Jennifer

[Chuck Engels]

Sorry you haven't gotten an answer yet Jennifer, must be something that no one else has tried yet.
It sounds like a great plan though, you could always give it a shot. Let us know what happens if you do

[tjodork]

Well, maybe not an answer but some possibly useful information....
I needed to catalog 1400 pictures I had scanned and I wanted to do that while on a trip using my laptop ( not my normal system).
I first saved them off to disk. I fired up PS6 on my laptop and spent MANY hours cataloging ....when I got done I had issues with the pictures being on an external disk and I scratched all of my work and started over.

The SECOND time, I copied the pictures to my laptop hard drive and then re cataloged the pictures. When I was done, I selected the option to write the tags INTO the actual files. Thus the catalog on my laptop was no longer needed.

When I got home I did a get_photo and read all of the files back into PS6 on my normal system. When they were read in, PS6 detected the tags and kept them attached to the files with the only caveat that the tags were ok, but were in a separate grouping (similar to people,events, other) called imported tags.
So if I had an original tag of Grandma under people, there would be another tag Grandma under imported tags.

I like your idea of just working with a catalog file but have no idea whether that would work. What I did above did work with a few quirks.

[Rockdoc]

Thanks guys, for your responses. Unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to copy the catalog over before I left. I will have to try it when I get back. Maybe between us, we can work out a method that would let us accomplish this, since it seems very handy.

I really dislike the idea of copying all my tags to an "imported" category though...

[Barb O]

Hi everyone,

I have not been here much recently, but I may be able to help for future plans.

The SECOND time, I copied the pictures to my laptop hard drive and then re cataloged the pictures. When I was done, I selected the option to write the tags INTO the actual files. Thus the catalog on my laptop was no longer needed.

When I got home I did a get_photo and read all of the files back into PS6 on my normal system. When they were read in, PS6 detected the tags and kept them attached to the files with the only caveat that the tags were ok, but were in a separate grouping (similar to people,events, other) called imported tags.

--In PSE 5, I always have the opportunity to match the Tags present in photos I am Importing to Tags that exist within my current Tagging structure of the catalog that is currently open. So I do not have that problem of the tags which do exist in my catalog being placed in Imported Tags. Does this choice not exist in PSE 6?

-- Yes Categories and SubCategories are not transferred with Write Tags to Files, it is only the Tag.

--FYI - There are some limitations to the Write Tags to Files - for example it can not be done for RAW formats or video file formats.

--FYI - Neither Version Sets nor Collections/Albums are preserved in this process. This has an impact on people who do editing or customized sequences of photos in addition to the Tagging while working on the laptop. A typical example is working on vacation photos while on vacation with the laptop.